1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to requirements for products and services and, in particular, to tools for helping a writer of requirements to generate requirements. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for providing a structure for writing a requirement and for providing an assessment of the quality of the requirement to the writer as the requirement is being written.
2. Background
Written requirements are used to communicate the mandatory characteristics of items. For example, an acquirer of items uses requirements to communicate the mandatory characteristics of items to be purchased to a supplier. These items may be products, services, or both.
The requirements may become part of the contract or other agreement between the acquirer and the supplier. The supplier then uses the requirements to develop the items. In some cases, the supplier may employ a requirements management tool to ensure that the items are developed in a manner that satisfies the requirements. Finally, the items delivered to the acquirer may be checked against the requirements to determine whether or not the items satisfy the requirements.
To improve communication between acquirer and supplier, it is desirable that requirements describe the mandatory characteristics of items in an unambiguous manner. Current systems and methods for generating requirements may be less effective than desired for consistently generating requirements that can be understood as clearly as desired.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a method and apparatus that takes into account one or more of the issues discussed above, as well as possibly other issues.